"It's a good movie," she said earnestly.

Then she noticed that Geng Yang on her left didn't show any emotion. Unlike others, he was sitting stock-still, making no noise at all. Doesn't he feel sad? she wondered. Time and again, out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed his stony face, which looked distant and detached. He seemed aware of her observation and exhaled a sigh, which betrayed more impatience than sadness.

At long last the movie was over and all lights came on. Many people had red eyes, but nobody looked ashamed. Some were still wiping their faces and blowing their noses with grimy handkerchiefs or scraps of newspaper. "Comrade Manna Wu," the commissar said in a miserable voice, "I didn't know it was such a sad picture. Otherwise I wouldn't have invited you."

"It was good and I was very touched."

"I have to stay with Old Zhao for a while. Do you mind if I let Comrade Geng Yang take you back to the hospital?"

"No, not at all."

"Please write to me and tell me what you think of Leaves of Grass, will you?"

"Yes, I will. "

Commissar Wei shook her hand and said good-bye. He gave instructions to Geng Yang, then moved away to join the vice-mayor.

The Volga was waiting for them in front of the building. They got into the car, which started heading north toward the hospital. Because the night had grown quiet, Manna noticed how little noise the car made. Only a small whirring sound could be heard as they drove along the asphalt road partly sheltered by sycamore leaves. The chauffeur had also seen the movie just now, and he was so affected by it that he began talking to the two passengers. "What a sad picture!" he said.

Manna entered into conversation with him, but meanwhile Geng Yang, seated in the front, didn't say a word. She was curious and wondered why he was so cold. "Geng Yang, what did you think of the movie?" she asked.

"It was all right."

"So you were not moved by it?"

"Actually not."

"Why not? Everybody was crying in the theater. Why were you so calm?"

"I don't cry. I've seen things more terrible than that."

The chauffeur seemed irritated by his answer and said, "Tell us what you've seen. "

"Oh, I've seen a lot."

"Like what?"

"For instance, last fall we dug a large vegetable cellar. As we were laying bricks to build its wall, a landslip happened and buried twelve men in the pit. In less than a second they all disappeared from sight, buried right under my nose. When we dug them out, nine men had no breath left in them. Then their parents came to my battalion from different provinces. You should've seen how they cried their hearts out; it twisted my entrails to hear them. But I had to remain coolheaded in order to maintain discipline among my men. One by one I turned down the parents' unreasonable demands, even though they called me names and made terrible scenes. If you were on the front, you'd see deaths and injuries quite often and grow used to them. So many men die in accidents; a man's life is worth nothing. In military exercises there are casualties all the time. "

As he was talking, the car rolled to a stop. Both he and Manna got off, but instead of holding out her hand to him, she just waved good-bye.

She turned and walked away toward the dormitory house, feeling his eyes following her for a long time. Then came the sound of the car door being shut, and the Volga pulled away quietly. To some extent she found Geng Yang interesting; he was so manly and so different from the others.

6

Sitting at his desk, Lin kept saying to himself, I must see her today.

For a whole morning whenever he was not with a patient, his mind would wander to Manna's meeting with Commissar Wei. He was anxious, because he had heard horrible stories about the top officers' private lives and was afraid Manna might become a victim. There was this general of a field army, Commander Pengfan Hong, who had changed wives every three or four years because he was too savage in bed for a regular woman to last longer than that. Every one of his wives would fall ill within a year of the wedding and soon die of kidney disease. Again and again the Party arranged a new wife for him, but after the deaths of several women he was finally persuaded to marry a large Russian woman, the only one who remained unbroken after living with him for seven years. Lin was fearful, since he had been told that Commissar Wei was a bulky man.

From Ran Su he had heard that Commissar Wei had called the hospital the morning after meeting Manna, saying that he had been very pleased to see her in person, and that he would like to keep contact with her and see where the relationship would go. Also from Director Su, Lin had found out that the commissar had divorced his wife not because of any marital problem but because she had written a booklet criticizing some member in the Political Bureau in Beijing and had been turned into a counter-revolutionary. Now she was being reformed on a remote farm north of Tsitsi-har. Fortunately they had only one child, a daughter, who had already grown up and was a fledgling actress at Changchun Film Studio.

So Lin went to see Manna after lunch. He was relieved when she said the commissar was more like a scholar than a warrior. They were standing in the corridor of her dormitory, his hips against the windowsill. She seemed to be in a cheerful frame of mind and told him, "He's rather avuncular, a very cultured man."

"That's good. I was so worried."

"About what?"

"I was afraid he might take advantage of you. "

Behind him, a horsefly suddenly started rasping on the wire screen, struggling in vain to get outside.

"I'll be right back." Manna returned to her bedroom.

In no time she came back with a plastic flyswatter and a book. Slapping the horsefly twice, she killed it, the screen ringing feebly. She put the yellow swatter on the windowsill and said, "Lin, have you read Leaves of Grass?"

"No, I haven't. Is it a novel?"

"No, a book of poems."

"I've never heard of it. Why do you ask?"

She showed him the book. "Commissar Wei wants me to read it and report to him my understanding of it. I really don't know how to do that. I read a few pages this morning, but the poems didn't make sense to me."

"You must take the report seriously."

"Can you help me with it?"

"Well… "

"Please!"

He agreed to see what he could do and took the book back with him. That evening he looked through it. Then for three nights in a row he worked at the poems, which he enjoyed reading but couldn't understand assuredly.

In the meantime, a kind of serenity settled in him. He was somewhat bemused by his peace of mind, wondering why he no longer felt angry with Commissar Wei and why he didn't act like most men in love, who would try every means to keep their women. He remembered that two years ago there had been a murder case in an artillery regiment – a soldier blew up himself and his platoon commander with a grenade, because both of them had been running after the same girl, who was an announcer at a commune broadcasting station. After the murder, people had criticized the platoon leader instead of the soldier, who stood no chance against his rival; they said the officer ought to have expected the soldier's violent act. Now, though Manna might part from Lin for good, why didn't he feel any deep resentment? How come he was so benign and so large-hearted? True, he was afraid of having to try to divorce his wife again. Yet normally he should have felt more reluctant to let Manna go, shouldn't he?

His answer to the questions and doubts was that he was a better-educated man, reasonable and gentle, different from those animallike men driven by lust and selfishness.

He read Leaves of Grass once more, still unable to understand it well enough to write about it. To him, this was a bizarre, wild book of poetry that had so many bold lines about sexuality that it could be interpreted either as obscenity or as praise of human vitality. Moreover, the celebration of the poet's self seemed to verge on a kind of megalomania that ought to be condemned. But on the whole this must be a good, healthy book; otherwise the commissar wouldn't have let Manna read it.